Just Another Heatwave (Tag)
by Elizabeth1
Summary: Maria POV, post Heatwave


Title: Just Another Heat Wave (Tag)  
Author: Elizabeth  
E-mail: uhmidont@theglobe.com  
Summary: Tag to "Heatwave." Maria POV.  
Spoilers: Yep. For "Heatwave."   
Rating: PG  
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, I just own the words of my story.  
Distribution: Ask.  
July 6, 2000  
  
**  
  
MICHAEL: Sorry, I can't get this involved. I'm alone, and that's the way it's gotta be. Maybe we should've never started this.  
  
MARIA: I'm gonna go outside and get some air.  
  
--from "Heatwave"  
  
**  
  
  
My feet are wobbling in my shoes and I was just outside to get some air and now I think I might walk home. There are clouds moving across the sky and maybe it will rain but I'm not sure if I even want it to. I like to have the moments in my life marked in some way--I like to have the moments that count marked in ways other than in my memories. Do you know what I am saying?  
  
I didn't realize the stupidity of my outfit or myself till it was too late to change it. But gold lame and feathered hair and sandals with straps that are digging into my feet--what was I thinking?   
  
I was thinking that I wanted to be golden and exotic and mysterious, that I wanted you (yes, you Michael) to see me from across the room and take a stand, make a declaration. Is it so wrong, to want to be worth more than fifteen-minute grope sessions? Is it so wrong to want the sweaty friction of your body against mine *and* the sweetness of walking down the hall, of showing that we are "together"?  
  
Oh yes, a thousand times yes. You can dress me up, but you can't take me anywhere, it seems. Or perhaps I am only worth frantic kisses and hot touches done away from light and behind the world's eyes.  
  
It has not escaped my notice that the beginning and the ending of whatever we had was all done with only ourselves to witness. There is no one else who can verify the truth of my story, I can only report things second-hand and the intensity that I feel now cannot, will not be matched when I tell this story to Liz. I will have folded all my emotions back in on myself, stored them up tight only to most likely forget them again and again and again because I am Maria DeLuca and that seems to be my way  
  
I am not something that one wants an attachment too, it seems. I am a (mistake, distraction, aberration). That is what you meant when you ended it all, though you didn't say those exact words and perhaps didn't even mean to be so cruel. Perhaps you didn't think any of it, maybe it was just a surface "I'm alone and that's the way it's got to be" with no inflection to be caught or meaning to be gleaned. But I find that hard to believe.   
  
I believe that a boy who could mark my neck with his teeth and bruise my back against a counter and whisper my name like it was a curse and then look at me almost dead eyes could not be anything but cruel.   
  
But despite all of this and despite the hair and makeup and glitter on my shoulders, I am still Maria DeLuca. Just Maria DeLuca who never noticed Michael Guerin until approximately 11 weeks ago and then just added "alien" to the mental list of "strange, dirty, and follicly challenged."   
  
And even though you have hurt me I will not let you break me. I turned my head to the side in the eraser room when you evaded my question about the party. I turned away from you because I knew what was coming. I turned back to you because I still wanted the moments we had left.  
  
It's not raining because I don't need it to.   
  
Now perhaps you understand?  
  
**  
  
When I was little my mother tried to explain that the Earth revolves in an orbit around the sun and that it also spins to give us day and night, and that all this spinning is a perfectly precise pattern of ordered circles. She said it was beautiful. I started crying because all that spinning meant that we were spinning too and I did not want to fly away off Earth and into space which always seemed to be enormous and very dark.  
  
I stopped crying eventually because no one can cry forever (Do you hear that Michael? I'm not even crying now. If you cared, would my lack of tears hurt you?) but I was still scared. I can remember that in pre-school I refused to play hopscotch because when I jumped down the chalk outline one foot would be up in the air and if the endless turning of the ground under me sped up just a little I would be flung away from Roswell (my secret dream and nightmare--I long to leave and yet I fear failing if I do) and into some strange place that wouldn't have room for me.   
  
But I forgot my fear because I wanted to show Tabitha Walters that she wasn't the world's best hopscotch player (I played indoors where the roof would stop my ascent and I was very good). And the funny thing is that I don't remember being terrified or worried when I stepped into those white chalk squares--I just felt determined. Ready. As if the worry was gone and forgotten.  
  
That is how things were with you. I was terrified before--of the very scent of you, a mysterious kind of smell that I found revoltingly fascinating at first and hopelessly mesmerizing later. You are simply not human, have no desire to be human, are only human through whatever process has put you here in the first place. You frightened me because all of what you are seemed to be another white chalk square that would life me up and spin me away.   
  
But then your personality--your Michael-self--it taunted me. You thought you knew everything, were so sure that I would leave you to dangle in the fate you (so richly) deserved on Route 285. And later, in that motel room, when there was that click that comes when you see someone, really see them for the first time--that's when I forgot to be afraid. I spun and spun and spun and the world tossed me into your arms and I wasn't scared or nervous or trembling. Liz is all of those things with Max, but then she and Max are a big deal. You and I were just a turn of the world and now it is time to move on.  
  
And now I am walking and there is no rain falling down on me. My heart is sturdy and it will keep on beating. Really, we were just like a heatwave in December, weren't we? That strange, that surprising, that not meant to be. I think I'm almost glad that the air is turning colder, I think I'm glad that the real world has spun back into place again.   
  
I'm just going to walk home now. You can do whatever you want to.  
  
END  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



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